My Dad's Cobra showed up on Wednesday. I figured I'd try and keep a build thread on here with the progress. He unloaded it with the driver on Wednesday. We inventoried all the boxes of parts it comes with and then pulled the rear end out of the parts Mustang on Thanksgiving. Today, Jeff came over and we made a body buck to hold the body while I work on everything else. Next, I've gotta figure out how to take the body off the frame and get it onto the buck.

Here's the Mustang sans rear end sitting with some of the other parts cars we have. Classy.

Nice!!!!! You now have me thinking of a similar build to keep me busy this winter unless I get a 250cc shifter kart. Please keep us posted on the build and the ultimate garage that you are building too?

Hah, yeah. I can't wait for the new garage. I'll have to have some kind of party once it's done. For now, I'm happy with the "small" 22x22' garage. It's easier to heat

So, I got the body buck finished up today. Just put in some diagonal bracing and shelves down the side. Then, Paul came over to take a look and he and Danielle helped remove the body. It must only weigh about 100lbs.

Finished body buck

Body mounted on the buck, all the boxes fit underneath. I can roll it out of the garage if I need more room to work.

From the back

Now I've gotta start cleaning up the rear end out of the Mustang. I ordered some POR-15 paint and will order some 3.08 gears. Since the car is so light and the motor will likely only rev to ~5500rpm, the 3.73s in it now are way too aggressive. 3.08s should cruise at ~1900rpm @ 70mph and be able to do 70mph in 2nd and 130mph in 4th, which seems pretty good for autocross and track day use.

Classing isn't really a concern. I'm hoping that once it's sorted out, it'll be a contender for FTD.

Classing is important in that it can make a difference in how you build the car and what kind of safety equipment you need. There's not too much difference in requirements for X/P and E/M, but if you wanted an X/P car the rules are stricter than E/M (less allowed and more weight). If you run E/M you can build a lighter car--1850# with most Ford V-8s.

The problem with CAM is that (unless the rules have changed) you can't run R comps or slicks, and also, nobody want to have a 3000# Cobra. But that was a joke, right???

It's all good though, if we have 5 or 6 cars running for FTD it should be a really interesting year. I'm going to go out and spend some more money on the Fiat...

Yeah, I was joking about CAM. We'll run whatever class it fits in, it's not important. Looks like using the ABS system from the Mustang may kick it out of XP. The safety requirements seem pretty simple in any of them.

Here's a video of the assembled motor on the dyno. I haven't seen a dyno chart, but supposedly it's making 600hp and 624ft-lbs of torque. Engine builder says the Factor Five headers are fairly restrictive and we'll lose a bunch of power. Should still be north of 400whp, which is plenty. It's a 408 (bored, stroked 351W) with some kind of fancy heads and cam. Plus an EFI velocity stack intake...because that's the easiest to fit under the hood :grin:

Well, I got a little bit more done this weekend. Front suspension is on and the rear end is torn apart. I've gotta order some parts (differential rebuild kit, front hub nuts) before I go much farther. Hopefully they come in this week.

I started by removing all of the aluminum panels. I made sure I labeled them all and recorded the order in which I removed them so I can put them back on without too much thinking.

Before:

After:

Pile of aluminum panels:

Paul came over and gave me a hand with the front suspension. We got that together for the most part. The hub nuts were backordered from Factory Five so I've gotta get some from elsewhere before I can bolt up the hubs and brakes. We're going to use the brakes off my Dad's '95 Mustang Cobra.

Front suspension:

I also disassembled the rear end. It's currently got 3.73 gears, which will get swapped out for some 3.08s. I'll be rebuilding the Eaton Posi that's already there and painting the whole housing.

Here's the rear as it came out of the Mustang. It's only slightly crusty:

I ground off the quad shock mounts and hit the whole thing with a wire wheel and degreaser:

Here it is completely disassembled:

If I have time this week after work, I'll start prepping and painting the rear end so I can hopefully mock it up in the car next weekend. If I can get the steering rack and front brakes in, the front end will be good to go. Then just finishing up the rear end and I should be able to roll it around.

In other news, the sheeting on my building is up. They need to do the trim and gutters and I need to put the garage doors up. Hopefully we can get the power run this month and everything hooked up in January.

Yeah, we've still got to do final grading. Putting a greater slope on the swale around the building so it drains out to the woods is on that list. And covering everything with stone should help. So much stone. In the mean time, at least I get to test the 4wd capabilities of my truck on super-bald tires.

It's 32'x80'. I was originally planning on a 50'x80' building, but the county didn't want that since it's bigger than my house. Also, anything north of 3000sqft is considered commercial and I'd have needed to have two separate handicap-accessible restrooms (one men's, one women's) and a bunch of other BS. This route was easier than trying to fight that and it really should be plenty large enough. I just won't be able to drive a tractor trailer through it like I could have with the other one.